My wife and I went out to dinner with our best friends Neal and Judy the other night and I found out what turns Judy on. After 12 years of marriage the thing that makes her feel connected and ready to “go” in bed is…choreplay.

She loves it even more when YOU iron.

She feels that kissing and touching and suggestive conversation are all fine-but the thing that gets her hot and bothered, is if Neal does the dishes, puts in a load of wash, gives the kids baths and gets them into bed all by himself.

The more chores he does on any given night, without being asked, the closer he is to getting lucky.

So I asked Neal, if he knows this, why doesn’t he do chores more often? He just looked at everyone blankly for a minute and then tentatively  answered,  “I guess I hate doing the dishes, more than I like having sex.”

So what should I do?

I’ve been married to the same woman for almost 15 years and the other night while we were making love, she tried something totally new. She did this thing…kind of a new position, her hands were … well let’s just say it felt good but … why now?

I'm still not even sure what happened.

So what did I do? I’ll tell you what I did. I got distracted. I started thinking, where did she learn that and when? Was it something she always wanted to try but kept forgetting? Was it something she saw recently in a movie and if so… what movie and where was I?

Or was it something she used to do with Leonard, the loser she dated before me and now she’s started fantasizing about him so she’s doing “it” to me! Or maybe a girlfriend of hers told her about it. Maybe it was Susan the redhead with the big, fake cupcakes. She looks like the type who would do it to her husband, and her husband Bob looks like he would like having it done to him.

Not that I didn’t like it, I just wasn’t expecting it. Not from my wife anyway. We have a pattern, an order to our romantic get-togethers that’s been established over a period of time. I think lots of couples do. It’s comfortable and relaxed and reliable… and one partner shouldn’t just decide to throw something new into the mix without consulting the other partner. I’d like to be prepared if  something new is going to happen during sex, especially when it’s with someone who hasn’t done anything new to me since the early part of Clinton’s first term.

Maybe we could discuss it beforehand, in detail. Its origins, how it will be performed, what the expected response should be. That’s not a lot to ask, right?